Kurds say joint raid with US in Iraq aimed to free their fighters

ERBIL/BAGHDAD: US special forces who raided a prison compound in northern Iraq were acting on intelligence that Kurdish fighters were being held there by the Islamic State, a source in the Kurdistan Region Security Council said yesterday.

Kurdish counter-terrorism forces also took part in the raid which rescued 69 people early on Thursday. One US soldier was killed, the first American to die in ground combat with the IS militants. Four Kurds were wounded.

Such rescue attempts are rare. The joint operation highlighted the status of Kurdish peshmerga fighters as key allies of the US-led coalition against the militants who control large swathes of Iraq and Syria.

“The intention was to rescue peshmerga taken hostage by IS,” said the source in the Security Council of Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region of northern Iraq.

“We had solid intelligence that peshmerga were being held in that compound,” the source said.

It turned out, however, that none of the captives were peshmerga, suggesting they may have been moved to another location, the source added.

The detainees were Arabs and included around 20 members of the Iraqi security forces.

The others were local residents and IS fighters that the group had accused of spying, said a US official.

The prisoners were about to be executed and dumped in four mass graves, the official said.

The IS attacked Kurdish positions on the frontline in Gwer, south of the region’s capital, after the raid.

An IS statement circulated online by the group’s supporters said “dozens” of peshmerga had been killed in the attack carried out by a suicide bomber.

But Qader Hassan, a peshmerga on the frontline, said only two people had been killed, and they belonged to an Iraqi army unit.

US forces accompanied the peshmerga as advisers in the Thursday’s mission but were drawn into fighting as the Kurds began to incur casualties, said Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the US-led coalition, which has been bombing the IS for more than a year.

Some 62 peshmerga have gone missing in battle with the militants and several have been beheaded in IS propaganda videos.

The IS regularly executes people it accuses of spying for the Iraqi state or foreign powers.

Iraqi government forces, Shia militias and the Kurds are all fighting the IS.

Iraq’s defence ministry said earlier yesterday it was not informed about the raid, which took place just north of the IS-controlled town of Hawija.

The mission was the most significant raid against the IS in months, and Warren said it had been requested by the Kurdistan regional government.

Senior Iraqi Shia politician Ayad Allawi said he suspected there must have been significant figures among the hostages to warrant a risky intervention by US special forces. – Reuters